dudacek

Honest question because I have yet to do any homework on Byram’s comparables: How many D 2 years away from UFA, with a career high of 38 points and stats that crater away from a stud like Dahlin have signed for anywhere near $8M? I mean besides Owen Power 😁? The Sabres don’t have to give him term. I can’t see him getting that kind of coin in arbitration with his numbers. I regards to your bigger question, the first thing I would do is dump Samuelsson, a much inferior player on a far worse contract. The second thing I would do is fix or trade Power, preferably fix, because the idea of those 3 D at their peak on the same team excites me. Like you, I’m not a GM either. That’s all I got.

Bottom line is you’ve avoided my central point. It’s not that Byram is great, or that he shouldn’t be traded, it’s that if you trade him, how are you replacing his minutes and making the defence better? Byram and Dahlin was THE MOST EFFECTIVE DEFENCE PAIRING IN THE NHL (sorry for the yelling, but it’s a fact that everyone chooses to ignore) Why not keep that and concentrate on the real problem: improving the 2nd and 3rd pairs?

He has to get a lot better to what? Earn a $50M contract? Agreed. To help the Sabres? He already does. Byram gave team a full season of 20+ minutes a night as a plus player against the other teams' best. I'm shocked at how many people seem to take that for granted. How many Sabres defencemen have done that over the past decade? Pretty sure there are 4, and people want to drive two of them to the nearest airport. The 3rd is Dahlin and the 4th is Brandon Montour, another skilled D this board stupidly wanted to get rid of. By all means, trade Byram. Just understand that even if you are replacing him with somebody different who can eat the same minutes, you still haven't made the team any better.

I’d be more interested in discussing this if I thought you’d actually watched him play.

Because he's the Sabres 2nd-best defenceman and at 23 with only 246 NHL games is likely to get better? (To be clear, I wasn't saying Byram should be signed to that contract, only that the math seems to fit, based on that $5.3M value this year GA posted.)

And yet... https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=120939

That's the real young kid who can skate, right? Remember thinking he had sleeper potential. Nice to see the progress.

Thought of @LGR4GM watching Konsta. In no way shape or form is that kid’s game “small”. Looks like he’s going to have that perfect fire hydrant hockey build and there’s no fear in his game at all.

I was like “wow Komarov is actually hanging in there against a monster”D then that happened. Overall, Amerks havent backed down an inch in the physical game despite the Crunch being very aware they need to play that way.

Aside from one 42-point blip, Foligno has been the same 25-point player for 8 years in Minny that he was in 5 with Buffalo.

Sorry for quoting myself, but I think this is sorta related to the Shadeur Sanders stuff going on right now at the NFL draft. Lots of kids yet to be drafted. Pretty much all of them because no NFL team had them #1 on their board when their turn came to pick. Few are losing their minds over any of them, but Sanders is breaking the internet. The only thing different about Sanders is the story that was built up around him.

It was interesting you talked about touches and who needs them. Norris came with the scouting report of being able to make a difference with just quick touches.

Fiddler-Schultz's goal was a nice snipe. The other four goals in the game were all of the greasier variety. The Amerks, even with all their youth, seem to be comfortable playing the kind of hockey the Sabres struggled at.

LOL. So you're expecting me to disprove my point by remembering the hits I said no one remembers 😜 (The goalie factor is definitely something that makes that one stand out more than, say the two we saw on Kulich this spring.)

I think it has more to do with sample size. I mean in a lot of these case you are talking about 3 goals or 2 over a span of 70 minutes. I was shocked to see how little time lines actually spend together.

It was interesting that they (I think to a man) believe that Samuelsson is done as a Sabre due to the Noesen hit. It reminded me very much of how Gaustad wore the response on Miller. Stuff like this always fascinates me in terms of group psychology: why do certain things take hold the way they do? Dozens of big hits happen without response throughout the season and throughout the league every year. Dozens of guys are guilty of not responding. A year later, most people would struggle to recall 3 of them, but a decade later everybody remembers Lucic on Miller. I bet a lot of you might say something like "teams just don't overcome that". I think that's probably because we don't remember the ones they did overcome. I mean I've seen people blaming Lucic on Miller for the 14 years of no playoffs. I mean seriously? There's one player left from that team in the entire league. The actual hit and the response literally had no tangible impact on goals for and against — then or since. But the impact of the story that grew up around it is immense. Why that particular one and not others? I'm sure there's reasons but it's crazy, and seems kinda capricious how things can take hold in our minds. Sorry, just random musings. (Personally I think Mule is done as a Sabre too, but because of his ***** play)

Wait, it was this thread, yes 3rd most common, but actually 159 minutes.

I posted it in another thread, but I think it was 113? If I remember it correctly the were the 3rd most common Sabres combo this year?

I didn't blame him for that one. Didn't get a great replay, but it looked like the puck took a weird bounce. That robbery shoulda been a goal. Very slow release by the Crunch player made Devon look good there. A much choppier period, with some not-smart penalties.

And Levi lets in a very weak one to open the 2nd.

Leone's Amerks look a helluvalot more structured than Seth Appert's did. Kulich popped like he should have

No one responded to my earlier post: Am I wrong to think that if Forton is promoted instead of Karmanos, then Karmanos is outta here? Forton is a recently promoted assistant GM. Karmanos is the longtime associate GM who is ahead of Forton on the org chart. He is also the guy who brought in Ventura, so if he goes, i wonder if Ventura goes as well?

Not a regular listener of After the Whistle, but just listened to this week’s round table pod with Hamilton and Harrington. It left me thinking the narrative and off season direction for the Sabres will be “it took Lindy over half a season to diagnose and begin to repair what was wrong with the team.” The moves on and off the ice this spring and in to the summer are and will be in line with his conclusions. It really feels like some of you are going to get what you hoped for: Lindy Ruff driving the bus as the de facto head of hockey operations.

The opportunity to share in that kind of joy is one of the biggest reasons I love sports. Embrace it every chance you get.

They are nothing like they were a few years ago. They play the game the right way and when scoring chances surface their skill guys are better at burying them than yours are.