dudacek

The Canuck blueprint to go from 27th at last year's all-star break to 1st t this year's all-star break: Replace Boudreau with Tocchet, along with switching most of the rest of the coaching staff. (Effectively) trade Horvat for Hronek Swap a handful of depth guys (Bear, Schenn, Ekman-Larsson, LAzar, Dries) for a different handful of depth guys (Cole, Suter, Lafferty, Blueger, Soucy) Have your core (Petterson, Miller, Demko, Hughes, Boeser) all have fantastic years at the same time. I can tell you guys first-hand from living in the market that one year ago the Canucks fan base was a frustrated and out of hope as you seem to be, and fan expectations in training camp were very low for this season.

For those who wonder what came first: the defence or the saves? (from the Buffalo News) https://buffalonews.com/sports/professional/nhl/sabres/upls-ascent-power-play-struggles-among-sabres-trends-to-watch-after-the-break/article_91265290-bf97-11ee-b2f3-33094822947d.html 1. Improved defense Granato didn’t implement any changes to the Sabres’ 5-on-5 system this season. Instead, he and his assistant coaches have placed a greater emphasis on different areas of their game to improve their team defense. A healthier lineup, and fewer turnovers, have helped Buffalo allow the third-fewest goals in the NHL since Jan. 1. The Sabres’ 28.7 shots allowed per game during that span is the ninth-best mark in the league and, according to Natural Stat Trick, they’re sixth in shot quality against at 5-on-5. 2. No. 1 goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen has emerged as the Sabres’ No. 1 goalie since the holiday break. His .940 save percentage in nine starts since Dec. 30 ranks eighth in the NHL during that span. He’s also posted a 1.57 goals-against average, which is lower than everyone except Edmonton’s Stuart Skinner, and a 6-3 record. Luukkonen’s .942 save percentage at 5-on-5 is tied with Skinner for the second-best mark, trailing only Connor Hellebuyck of the Winnipeg Jets. According to NHL’s Edge data, Luukkonen’s .896 save percentage on high-danger shots is above league average.

Good thread topic. "Like" has nothing to do with how good or bad they are —now, or over all. The answers seem to inevitably be a poster's initial take/expectations for a player multiplied by "what have you done for me lately". I think I like Skinner less than the board does, and most of the others the same or more. That's probably because so many of these guys made a good first impression (Levi, Power, Samuelsson, Ryan Johnson, Benson, Peterka, Quinn, Tuch) or rewarded my patience (Thompson, Mittelstadt, Greenway, Dahlin, Clifton, Luukkonen). History and the relative inexperience of most, makes me think many of them are/will be better than they are right now. i think many of you are looking at these players through the lens of 15 years of years of disappointment and are justifiably angry that they teased last year, then failed. I'm more looking at it as year three after a scorched-earth rebuild and crossing my fingers that this is the adversity that teaches a young team the lessons it needs for future success. Probably naive. I was wrong about where Murray had taken us in year three and wrong about what i thought Botterill was setting up for in year three. But the question was about "like" and I like these players more than any group over the drought. I think they have skill and heart but lack experience, confidence and cohesion. They still play like the boys most are.

Yep. That's what I was getting at in my initial post. This is not a "mistake" within Granato's system. This is how it's designed.

I agree with where you're going with the bold. Like most systems, it breaks down if just one guy is freelancing. So the question for me becomes who is freelancing? Why? And why is it taking so long to be corrected? In the bigger picture though, I still believe the offence has been a bigger issue than the defence all season. I'm not disagreeing with your habit of focusing on specific goals against, but I have to say that should be done with a caveat of "of course there were breakdowns" on the goals against. You'll see similar breakdowns on the highlights of most goals against, and with most teams. The Sabres by design play high event hockey. If they are playing their game, you expect breakdowns at both ends of the ice. They're built to win 4-3, not 2-1. They'll take the Kopitar goal if the tradeoff is 2 of those Peterka goals. Most games they just haven't been getting enough of the latter. You might disagree with that choice, but that's a different discussion. I think they're not only failing, they're failing on their own terms. Thanks for bringing some good discussion to the board.

I don't study other teams enough to know if there are teams (Carolina comes to mind?) that execute this system well, or if it's just a bad system period. I mean you do see it working for the Sabres multiple times a game, you just see it failing a lot as well. Buffalo seems to skate fast enough to make it work, so are they making bad decisions? Slow to recognize situations? Not invested enough to trust it, or each other? Either the system is flawed, a bad match for the players, or the message isn't getting through. Each of those things seem to point back at the coaching staff. (I did like the rush offence last night, looked like last year. Again, why has that disappeared?)

I think the Sabres (in many situations) are coached to come hard at the puck carrier and in layers. The system is designed to create odd-man advantages for the defence, where the primary defender is taking away time and space and the layers are in a position to block, or at least disrupt passes, support puck battles, and pounce on forced turnovers. By design it will leave people open, on the principle that the open guy is a great distance away from the puck carrier, with a lot of obstacles between them. It's betting those obstacles, combined with the pressure, should mean the puck rarely gets to the open guy. Your photo above both illustrates the principle and where it can break down. Mittelstadt, Greenway and Dahlin are doing what they are supposed to do positionally. Where it breaks down is the primary defender, Bryson, has allowed the puck carrier far too much time and space. Without time and space, the puck carrier would be angled into the corner, forced to reverse up the boards, or attempting a rushed pass that the Sabres are in position to pick off. Without the pressure, the puck carrier is talented enough to pick his spot between Mitts and Dahlin and put it on the tape for Kopitar. Really it's not much different than defence in football: get in the QB's face and he'll miss his throws. Give him time and he'll pick you apart.

Thanks for raising the quality of Sabrespace discussion. You've given us all a lot to think about.

Tage weathered the truckloads of crap dumped on him by internet tough guys as the return for the O'Reilly trade, a skinny frame that shot up 8 inches in three years, a cancer scare from his wife, a devastating shoulder injury, demotion to the minors, and Ralph Krueger to transform himself into a physical specimen and a 38-goal scorer. Then he took the backlash of too much, too soon against his big contract and responded with 47 goals and 94 points. Never once whined or pointed fingers His career has been the definition of heart. What's obvious is your dog don't hunt.

Not saying this is you, but your post sparked a thought from a few days ago. It feels like a lot of people have an unrealistic expectation of turnovers when it comes to hockey. Maybe it's a football fan thing? It's not exactly incorrect, but sometimes seems too simplistic to me the way it's used. Hockey is game of constant turnovers. As in they happen multiple times for both teams every single shift. You can and should limit them, but you can't hope to eliminate them. The Sabres gave up 2 goals on egregious turnovers Saturday while at the same time doing an excellent job of limiting the amount of turnovers over the course of the game. You could say the turnovers cost them the game, but what really cost the Sabres the game was Tampa executing on what few turnovers they got, the Sabres not getting a big save following those turnovers, and the Sabres failing to force enough Lightning turnovers or execute on the ones they did. Not saying the Sabres are good at defence, or can't be improved. But generally speaking the ineptitude of the Sabres team defence feels overstated this year, especially recently.

Small sample size, and against some weak teams, but the Sabres are allowing 1.75 goals per game in the 8 games since the calendar turned. That's good for 3rd in the league. Taking it back to Dec. 1 — 23 games — they're at 2.96 good for 13th. And that number is swollen by the 9-goal Columbus debacle. I don't see people recognizing it in the game day threads, but my eye test supported it in the Tampa and Vancouver games. They're clearly better at defence than they were a year ago. They just haven't improved enough to make up for the fall-off in offence.

Interesting to see that the fancy stats are matching my eye test in terms of giving us a chance. But the fancy stats don't consider that moderately consistent, but rather extremely consistent. 🤔

38 goalies have played 20 games this year. He ranks 14th among them in GAA and 14th in SV% To my eyes, he whiffed in the 5-1 loss Dec. 13 to Colorado, the Nov. 11 6-4 loss in St. Louis and the Nov. 3 5-1 loss to Philly. All 3 of those games the team got off to terrible starts and he didn't have their backs. His other 17 starts he's been good enough to give his team a chance to win. To me, his play this year qualifies as the "good enough" goaltending most of us did not think he was capable of and were hoping Adams would step outside the organization this summer to acquire. Really interested to see if those trends continue this morning. This is the kind of moment in the season where UPL historically would serve up a dud. I wouldn't call it a defining moment, more of a signpost, but significant nonetheless in his bid to shed that 'inconsistent' label.

He's pretty clearly stated as much, IMO, and current actions back it up. it's a patient, long-view approach, and as much as most of us look at this as year 13 of failure, i think he perceives it (or at least wants to) as a year 3 stumble after years 1 and 2 of growth and exceeding expectations. I expect any reset is going to be largely supplemental: he's going to stick with his philosophy — and probably most of his pieces, so long as they remain on board with his philosophy — until he succeeds or is fired.

This is sidestepping?

I have a ton of respect for Don Granato. I want him to succeed. I believe this team has more talent than its record shows. Is it just a matter of time, or the right chemistry move flicking the switch? Or is one of my premises wrong? Should this be a case of keeping Jared Bednar or of flipping Bruce Boudreau for Rick Tocchet? I just don’t know.

Absolutely. But I think we’d agree that the variable is whether or not we can trade Casey for, say, Charlie Coyle, or some other “now” player you might think we need more. If the market is offering up some version of Devon Levi and Jiri Kulich, I’m going to stick with Casey, thank you very much.

“Earned” is subjective, but that is the going rate. Deciding whether to spend it on Casey, or on a Jacob Markstrom, or on 3 Will Borgens is how the GM earns his pay cheque. The rest of your post is hyperbole as well. Adams has created a long-term cost-certainty: none of his core players with the exception of Tuch will be up for raises in the next 6 years as the cap grows by sizable chunks; none appear to be on immovable contracts. He will have the ability to pick and choose whether to use that space on outsiders or reward homegrown talent, or trade away pieces to accomplish both. The tough choices won’t be coming until Tuch comes due around the same time you hope Benson or Quinn takes leap Signing Mitts to market value now handicaps him in no way shape or form. The only issue is whether or not his current level of play is a mirage, the way the level of play that “earned” Cozens his deal has been so far.

Hyperbole, but even if he was, he's not a good contract comparable. Contracts are usually very much about points, at least at their starting point. Coyle signed his deal at 28 partway through the final year in a string of 37, 34 and 37 point seasons, where he most recently was probably the Bruins 5 or 6 forward, and wasn't ever going to approach the artificial cap the $6 million trio of Bergeron Marchand and Pastrnak were being underpaid at Mitts will be signing at 25 coming off seasons of 19 (40ish*), 59 and 70ish*, where he most recently has arguably been the Sabres #1 forward, and isn't going to be taking a significant discount from his $7 million peers Cozens and Thompson — who signed after and during 68-point seasons, respectively. Mittelstadt's best comparable will be 50-70ish point RFA 3rd contract forwards in their mid-20s getting top 6 minutes signing in the past year or two. You're looking at guys like these: https://www.capfriendly.com/browse/active/2024/caphit/all/forwards?signing-status=rfa&arbitration=eligible&contract=standard&extension=yes&stats-season=2023&limits=age-24-27,points-40-130,signingage-24-27

The question was a legit attempt to see where Sabrespace applies blame, for what is a team that certainly isn’t better than last year’s but maybe isn’t much worse either. @DarthEbriate seems to think Adam’s dropped the ball for not acquiring the correct pieces. @sabremike skirts the roster question but sees a team that he thinks looks worse than it did and blames the coaches. From reading the site, I know other are blaming the players. (Pretty much every one of them except for Quinn, Peterka, Benson and Ryan Johnson. You know, the one who haven’t been around long enough to get too disappointed in)

They are 18-20-4 and 7 points out. Given the roster, what should their record be? (Last year on Jan. 13, they were 20-18-2, 6 points out.)

Valid, but the people doing the framing here aren't you and I, they are Pegula, Adams and Granato. I was framing my take in the context of their stated path and goals.

Patience? You have to wonder about the coaching. Their lack of focus, connectivity and consistency is often the mark of an inexperienced team. It’s also the mark of a poorly-coached team. I guess if you’re Adams and you believe Donnie still has the ear of the room, the leadership skills to get these players back on the rails, the technical chops to course-correct his system, and the balls to revamp his staff you can be patient. I guess if you’re Pegula and you that believe Tuch, Thompson, Power, Dahlin, Cozens, Samuelsson and Levi are a legitimate contending core and worthy of the investments Adams has made in them, that he will eventually leverage his considerable depth of young talent into the proper supporting cast, and that his draft-and-develop policy is the correct path despite the bumps on the way, you can be patient. Especially if you remind yourself that you wanted an attacking team and that Benson, Peterka, Quinn, Krebs, Johnson, Power, Levi and Luukkonen — more than a 3rd of your roster — has played less than 200 NHL games. Really though, it’s about the core. If you like that group of players, you should be patient, because if they turn things around, the team will inevitably turn with them. But if you don’t believe in the people and principles Adams believes in — the players and the culture he has chosen to be the pillars of his rebuild — then any patience is a waste of time. Which is both sad and scary. Sad because I actually liked this group in a way I never did the previous few. Scary, because it inevitably means another push of the reset button and three more years just to get back to where we were in September.

As far the state of the franchise goes, I think Sabrespacers are missing the mark when they continue to hone in on inconsequential, peripheral issues like 3 goalies, 11/7, Kyle Okposo’s presence, and whether they should play Johnson or Johnson. I, and I think many of you, felt this team was promising because it was loaded with explosive firepower. The most pertinent, significant issue this season is why the heck is this team 22nd in offence? This team is built to score. Sure it needed to get better defensively in order to contend. Sure it hasn’t done that. But that isn’t why they aren’t good. They aren’t good because they can’t seem to outscore their mistakes any more. What has happened to this team’s identity? The central question surrounding the team is not whether Adams has failed to accumulate the proper supporting cast, it’s about whether he has constructed a legitimate core. Because it’s the core that is letting us down. I wonder if (hope that?) this team came into the season on a misguided mission to change the way it plays, in the process stopped doing what it did well, and when the failures, the injuries, and the pressures started to mount, it got stuck on a painful treadmill of second-guessing itself. I also wonder if what we saw from Tuch/Thompson/Skinner/Cozens/Dahlin/Power/Samuelsson last year was not the promise of what is to come. Rather, it was some lightning in a bottle, never to be repeated.

It’s because this place has become like hanging out with a bunch of recent divorcees complaining about their ex-wives. And before PA jumps on me for telling people how to be fans, people have every right to say what they want to say and plenty of reasons to be disappointed. Just like I have every right to choose not to engage. I come here for good, provocative writing, fresh, insightful hockey takes and sharing in our mutual love of the Sabres. You’ll probably see more of me when this team starts inspiring more of that.