dudacek

Don said this morning on his radio show that the long-term plan is to run 3 offensively dangerous lines because so few teams have a good 3rd pair on D. With the three developing pairs, Mitts, Greenway, Cozens and Tuch, plus Thompson and Skinner, they certainly appear to potentially have the horses. @PerreaultForever is going to be @pessimisticforever, it seems.

I see what you’re getting at here and you may be right, but I don’t think that’s automatic. I think the evidence for what we’re aiming for was in the Leafs game: the Sabres play fast and score a lot, the goalie makes enough key saves that we win 5-4 instead of lose 6-5. I mean, there’s obviously far more variation over the course of the year, but that’s the broadbrush expectation of what this roster could do with average goaltending. The team issue has been the skaters too often being cute (Montreal) or listless (Philly) moreso than them being too focused on defence (NYI) or the goalies being bad.

This is true if the standard you demand is “good” goaltending as opposed to adequate goaltending. Good goaltending is something maybe 10 teams have. I think the Sabres goaltending has been decent enough this year to deliver the 4 in 6 @GASabresIUFAN is calling for if the Sabres skaters are good. It’s the Sabres skaters that have failed. I say this fully expecting that situation not to last.

Context needed, I think. I think we all want our team to be above average in all areas. You been pretty vocal as playoffs as your pass/fail line. A small number of average teams make the playoffs. A lot of people have subscribed to the idea “all we need is average goaltending” Adams has acted like our goalies are better options than the goalies he could have acquired. Average goaltending supports that premise a lot better than bad goaltending.

My initial take is the goalies are failing the numbers test but passing the eye test, but that's not really true either. They're 17th in a 32-team league in Goals Against; you can't get more dead centre than that. Individually, the numbers show Comrie has been good, UPL has been fine (the high danger save % really sticks out) and Levi needs to be better. League wide averages: Goals against 3.08 Save %: .897 High danger save %: .785 UPL: Goals against 3.10 Save %: .901 High danger save %: .829 Levi: Goals against 3.41 Save %: .886 High danger save %: .703 Comrie: Goals against 2.45 Save %: .914 High danger save %: .808 The Sabres have been an average team, getting average goaltending.

Tage and Greenway. They are actually plus players on the PK: 1 goal against, 2 shorties for. The Matthews goal Saturday was the first time they’d cracked short handed this year. Leading the league in GA per SH minutes played amongst the league’s regular penalty killers, or some such weird stat if memory serves.

Did we know Mittelstadt is #2 in the entire NHL for even-strength points this year? Noticed he’s (temporarily?) replaced Cozens on PP1, but in what role? What’s to stop them from deploying him behind the net as the “down low QB” opposite Dahlin, get him to handle the puck more like Gretzky in the old days? Why not Peterka opposite Tage on PP1? I’ve seen him score plenty from there in juniors and Rochester. Much better at entries and retrievals than VO. He’s a lefty, unlike Cozens. How about Dahlin opposite Tage and Power on top? Greenway net front? Cozens? Or maybe get Tuch and Skinner to, you know, do something? They rarely set people up and they don’t screen, snipe or crash the net nearly enough. Get them cycling with Tage like they do at even strength, with Dahlin and Power at the points So many untapped alternatives. Time to try one.

I would suspect Kulich is the next man up, if/when the Savoie/Benson thing runs it’s course. At least if we are talking about someone to play with Cozens or Mittelstadt in the middle six. Although, maybe Rosen is ahead? I’ve not seen full Amerks games so far this year.

I don’t see either of these things. I think the Sabres came into the season with 11 of 13/14 forward spots set, including Jost as their utility guy. Olofsson and Benson beat out Kulich, Rosen, Biro and Rousek for the final 2 spots. Savoie was in that mix but missed his chance due to injury. Olofsson has squandered his chance, Benson got hurt. Savoie is the next guy they want to look at, but they snuck a peek at Rousek and Biro while he finished his conditioning stint. How well Savoie runs with his opportunity will help decide what comes next.

I’m going to strongly disagree with the bold. The Canadiens game, was, in a nutshell, what has been wrong with the Sabres. Buffalo was clearly the more talented team, and it decided it was more interested in passing the puck around like the Harlem Globetrotters and creating highlight reel plays than it was in winning the game. The Canadiens gave maximum effort to minimizing the dangers of the Sabres attack and to capitalizing on their rare chances. The low-skill team playing the right way won, the high-skill team playing the wrong way lost. To your bigger point, 4 of 6 wasn’t what the Sabres gave us. We got 2 “good” games, 2 “decent” games and 2 “bad” games You can’t fart around in the NHL. Puck luck determines far too many games. You want to be successful over 82, you need 3 or 4 good and 1 or 2 decent for every bad because you’re going to lose half the decent games.

Eye test over your 6 shows: Mostly good game they nearly pissed away late against an Ottawa team facing some serious adversity OK game against a good Devils team where they stayed in it largely because NJ’s goalie kinda sucked Best game of the season against a very good Colorado team A bad game against a mediocre Philly team that made a good UPL look like Kenny Dryden An awful game against a mediocre Philly team where they were booed off the ice A good game against a good but maybe not great Leaf team. Yes, they are scoring more, but the trend I see in terms of their quality of play is simple inconsistency. They can play the right way. Too often, they don’t.

Hope you are right. The team Ive been watching has the size, speed and talent to match up with pretty much anyone. Its also looking like an immature squad that would rather make fancy plays with pucks and toy with opponents than take straight, hard lines and eliminate bodies. The coach seems to get it; he keeps harping on being direct and purposeful. The GM seems to get it; his newest acquisitions (Greenway, Johnson and to a lesser extent Clifton) are showing the way. Their core, not so much. I have no doubt the switch is there. Somebody better flip it soon.

Hope 1, 2 and 4 stay intact and 3 coalesces into Savoie Cozens Krebs. Peyton has been one of the disappointments for me so far and Cozens has been very inconsistent, but that's combo that should be able to push the pace the way Donnie wants them to play, especially against 3rd pairings. I've been on board the "VO needs to move on" train, but I have to admit i am mildly surprised at how ineffective he's been. He's dropped to something like 16/17 on the forward depth chart. He's better than that.

Why can’t Krebs evolve into the type of bottom 6 player people say we are going to need? He’s fast, courageous and diligent. Why can’t he be paid like most bottom 6 25-point scorers? It feels like a lot of people initially pictured him as a 60-point 2C and have decided he’s less likely to become one than others in the system, therefore he’s going to have to move on.

Yep. I rank Mitts as our 5th forward and so far this year you could argue he has been our best. Mitts at 7 would put our top 5 forwards at a shade under $35 million. Tuch will get a raise but Skinner will disappear. We will be paying our top 2 D a lot. Penguins top 5 is 31. Avs are a shade over 40, Leafs are 46, Florida 34… All those teams will have new contracts coming up too. Is 35 million for our top 5 out of line? Will it be in 2 years? 5?

Yes. I would say being kept away from the mess that was the Sabres in 2014/15 was better for Reinhart. And I’d agree it it is the right thing for plenty of prospects and probably would be fine for Benson. I’m just disagreeing that it is always the best thing. Honestly, I’m kinda with Webster in that I think most of the good ones make it regardless. It’s more about how far they get and how fast that development affects. You say this like he hasn’t played 20-minutes a night in all situations already. He’s played in the WHL for 3 years. He was probably the league’s 2nd-best player. At the WHL level, his game doesn’t really have holes. He needs to get stronger and he needs to adjust to playing at a faster pace. The bold is true for some players. It’s not for all. I’m not sure if it’s best for Benson, but I tend to trust Adams and Granato when it comes to making that decision.

You understand this has nothing to do with people who want to see an element of the team upgraded and argue in favour for that right? It’s about the tendency to choose a whipping boy and pile on with the absolutes and the personal insults. It’s just another manifestation of what pisses you off when folks do it to Eichel. You’ve had no trouble pointing out how wrong they were. Is that “Zamboni territory”?

A bunch of high profile errors plus a new owner, it was only a matter of time.

Doug Smith, perhaps the most generic #2 overall pick ever? Acquired at age 22 along with Brian Engblom for McKenna, Baumgartner and the legendary Larry Playfair, scored 61 points points in his first 92 games as a Sabre and was out of the NHL 3 years later. Picked right after Dale Hawerchuk and before Bobby Carpenter and Ron Francis. Love to hear that guy’s story.

it stands to reason that the best way to develop prospects is to challenge them. I don't see WHL competition doing that for Benson (or Savoie), so the challenges there would have to come mostly outside of game situations: practice, off-ice habits, etcetera. So it really comes down to coaching, and environment, doesn't it?

Oh, thank god! Corey Pronman says this guy is better than Isak Rosen! (Sorry, Pronman's last half-assed batch of redrafts are where he officially jumped the shark for me)

Sabres played down to Philly and teams like them too often last year. UPL has a history of stepping back after stepping up. Time for a statement on both fronts.

Well if people think something about UPL’s body language encouraged the Sabres to get outshot 18-4 by New Jersey, I guess you could also postulate that something about his body language encouraged them to score lots of goals in most of his starts. Look, UPL lets in too many goals and has for most of his 49 NHL games. But the certitude some fans have that what he was in September of 2022 is all he ever was or will be drives me nuts. I don’t have high hopes for the kid, but I hope he stuffs it in these “fan’s” faces in much the same way Quinn and Mittelstadt have. That amount of hatred dumped on any Buffalo Sabre who just seems to show up and work hard doesn’t seem very “Buffalo” to me.

Also, with Comrie getting injured again, and Tokarski not healthy either, we sure are fortunate Adams kept 3 goalies and didn’t lose anybody to waivers, aren’t we? 😘

Not interested in debating Old Man Pete’s merits, especially with someone who is so obviously a UPL truther. But to the bold I have to ask: how do you explain the Sabres being 19/12/4 over the past calendar year with him in net? 35 games is not a small sample size. Especially for people who buried UPL two years ago for his 35-game year in Rochester.