dudacek

To me Thompson is the obvious 3rd. Guy takes personal responsibility and has fought through a *****-ton of adversity without ever complaining or giving up. Self-made guy who has committed to the city and the franchise and a good example to the younger guys. He’s also one of the senior guys in terms of age, games played and games played in Buffalo. Also doesn’t hurt that he is the biggest offensive threat and probably has a ton of influence with the younger forwards.

In a perfect world we hire the next Bill Zito, who quickly flips Adams mistakes for better players, convinces Pegula to spend wisely and turns things around quickly, the way @Thorny wishes Adams would have. In the real world, Pegula probably either botches the hire, or gets in his way and we get to repeat these conversations for another 4 years as the new guy muddles his way through, and more and more fantastic fans like @Weave and @Wyldnwoody44 just get too tired or angry to invest themselves any more.

@Taro T Look at the ages. https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000352009.html https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000552014.html Some of the best teams of the cap era didn’t look too much different than this Sabres team before they started to emerge: a group of young players getting good at the same time. This team had 99 points after missing the playoffs the previous 9 years in a row. (Oddly enough their biggest off-season moves were trading their talented young 2C for a talented young defenceman and dumping Jeff Skinner) https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0009792019.html Pointing this out leads to me being called a Pegula/Adams apologist, but the plan is proven to work IF YOU PICK THE RIGHT PLAYERS. Adams needs to prove he did.

Agreed. I think Murray, Jobst and Dunne are probably top 9, but Wahlberg, Rosen, Kulich, Östlund, Helenius should join them and Tullio, Kozak and the Russians could be in the mix. Am I missing anybody? Kisakov and Kozak really need to step up or risk becoming irrelevant.

This. College guys are never in camp. Euros under contract to a European team rarely are. What's really interesting about this team is how many of them will be playing for the Amerks this year. Meidema, Ponocha, Brunet and the goalies will be headed back to junior. The rest will be Amerks or their ECHL affiliate. It's kinda unheard of.

Plus Johnson, who I guess makes sense but I could have seen excused, and Chevaldayoff who I'd completely forgotten about. Wonder if he'll do something to get noticed. Feels like we haven't had that type of prospect in a long time.

Pretty much everyone we'd expect, no?

It was. Of particular interest was Lindy’s success with puck-moving defencemen, arguably the strongest element of this team and one accompanied by a large degree of uncertainty. I can add that I took a look at how Lindy used his defence 2 years ago when the Devils took their huge leap and discovered that his top 5 got within 2 minutes of each other and his #6 was used much more sparingly. Last year was kinda similar, except injuries factored in, so it was more a 4/2 split when Hamilton was unavailable. A lot of their drop last year can be traced back to losing their best guy for most of the year and replacing 2 of their top 5 with rookies, even though they were talented rookies. Im curious how having a prime Dahlin - something I don’t believe Lindy has ever had - factors.

plenty of bad people and bad owners have won when the stars aligned for them. Just like teams have won with bad goalies, or without franchise centres, or overwhelming speed or toughness. There is no magic formula, it’s all about lining up as many pieces as possible in your favour and then executing while getting the proper bounces. Pegula it appears will always be an anchor, therefore you need a GM who can manage Pegula in the way Beane and McDermott apparently can and Murray and Botterill could not. Kevyn’s ability to get along with Pegula should not be discounted as a plus, and neither should his seeming ability to install a working environment that his employees seem to like despite Pegula’s capricious ownership. But all that is wasted if he lacks the ability to acquire and develop talent on and off the ice.

Just another reason to suspect that there is indeed a multi-year on the table for Krebs for more and he has to decide whether its in his best interest to bet on himself and take the qualifier like Mittelstadt did, or go for security and take the term like Tage did.

How do you decide whether such things are there or not, if not by wins?

By this you mean wins, right? More specifically, enough wins to get them in the playoffs?

I don’t expect any of them to be better than Krebs in a bottom 6 role. It’s possible Rosen or Kulich might be better in an offensive role, but I’d be surprised if either beat out Krebs for a roster spot. I have the new guys ahead of Krebs in the pecking order because of attributes, but I don’t know that they are clearly better players than Krebs is.

Not disagreeing with your point, but was Krebs ever a healthy scratch last year? He was 3rd in games played with 80 and I don’t remember him sitting out, really since the first half of the previous year, when Donnie was rotating him with Peterka and Quinn initially and then they added Jost. But since he kinda found a slot between KO and Girgs, it feels like he’s been a regular.

From Mike Harrington’s interview with Alex Tuch: Tuch and his teammates have ramped up preparation for the new hockey season under new head coach Lindy Ruff. Tuch said nearly two dozen Sabres have been skating at LECOM Harborcenter. Thoughts on the Gaudreaus and routine “excited about Lindy and the element the new guys will bring” comments comprise most of the interview.

Assuming he’s healthy, committed to this team, and here, I’d put the over/under of Krebs games at 70.

The thought that the Sabres have become so good there is no way Krebs can squeeze into the lineup seems wildly optimistic to me. 215 20/46/66 105 8/16/24 282 31/47/78 289 36/47/83 219 32/43/75 Never mind the inevitability of injury, check out the career stats. Statistically, he’s cut from similar cloth to our 4 new bottom-6 guys and he’s capable of playing in a similar role. Effort and coachability don’t seem to be issues. And he may have more utility further up the lineup. Like most of you, I see him starting the season as #13, but it’s not like this team is stuffed full of far better, or more proven players and the coach isn’t the type to sit still. He has as much chance of being an everyday player as most. He just has to earn it.

Annual Bills game bond becoming a team tradition. https://www.instagram.com/p/C_qVh6mu5Zn/?igsh=cWd6ejV6Y3I0b2tx Looks like about 20 of them made the outing. The kid on the left end not looking nearly as scrawny as Corey Pronman told me he was.

Wouldn’t an absolute worst-case scenario be Kulich, Rosen and Johnson? All of whom should be cheap and ready, unless they’re busts? Isnt it the whole point of having a prospect pool? Never mind the fact that these are the kinds of decisions every playoff team has to make every year.

Thanks Chad for doing the homework and @LGR4GM for posting. The “they need to keep space open for…?” is such a red herring. There is one “dangerous” contract looming and that is Byram’s because he will be 2 years from UFA and will have arb rights. Quinn, Benson, Levi and Peterka are all on ELCs and have no leverage whatsoever. They can choose to sign them to bigger long-term deals, but they can also take the Reinhart route. And the fact is if any of them warrant fat deals, it will be because THEY PLAYED FANTASTIC HOCKEY AND EARNED IT and if they all do, that means the Sabres WILL BE GOOD!

Pretty much everything everyone was saying about the Bills proved true. Roster turnover/injuries on defence a concern. Offence will be by committee Any team that has Josh Allen will always be in it.

The Sabres name being dropped is almost certainly as a lever elsewhere. Giordano might be a good “coach” for our young guys, but he’s not good enough to play in our starting 6. Looks like another Erik Johnson and would probably be as helpful. Any player signing here this season to collect a pay cheque while plotting a move elsewhere can go ***** himself. Any GM happily signing such a player can do the same.

What is kinda crazy is seeing how Krebs is actually ahead in his development compared to Tage and Casey coming off their ELCs, and how Asplund wasnt far off either coming off his. Asplund scored 10 goals over 2 years on his 2nd contract and fell out of the league. Casey put up 10 on his in just 41 COVID games Tage? He scored 93 goals over his 3 years on what has to be the biggest bargain 2nd contract in modern Sabres history. I see no way in hell Krebs develops anywhere close to the way Tage did, but maybe it is a little premature to dismiss him as another Asplund in the making.

Maybe this isn’t that unusual. Coming off his ELC and a ***** 9-point NHL season, Casey Mittelstadt signed a $875K 1-year deal one week before the start of training camp. Meanwhile, 2 months earlier, coming off his ELC and a ***** 1-game NHL season, Tage Thompson signed a 3-year deal with a $1.4 AAV. And a year later, coming off 11 points in 28 COVID season games, Rasmus Asplund signed a 2-year deal for $865K AAV 6 weeks before training camp. Those are the only 3 comparables of Adams’ career. The track record shows the holdup here may actually be Adams standing firm on the QA for one-year deal, but dangling more for term. Maybe the new Dad who once said he wants to raise a family in Buffalo is looking for security and the GM actually does believe in Krebs and is hoping for another Tage-type win, meaning this is a trickier negotiation than it appears.

I realize this is in “who cares?” file for most of you, but I am really puzzled with what is going on with his contract. The player has virtually no leverage here: he’s coming off a 4-goal season and on paper has slipped off the starting roster. He can’t afford to miss one second of camp. Shouldnt he just be taking whatever he’s offered and concentrating on impressing his new coach? Is this about just waiting until the last minute in the hopes of squeezing out an extra couple hundred grand? Or is there something else going on?