dudacek

This isn’t really about prospects anyway, it’s about wanting more shift disturbers on the actual team. The number of Tom Wilsons worthy of top 10 picks in the NHL draft are few and far between, year after year. If you’re taking the best one available ahead of a Zach Benson, or an Owen Power, you’re probably not getting the best player. It’s not that aren’t interested in the type. The Sabres picked Wahlberg and Strbak in the 2nd round last year, they’ve got guys like Miedema, Novikov, Poltapov and Nadeau in the system. It’s whether or not guys like that work out.

Always appreciate when the numbers support the eye test. It felt like the Sabres improved in their own zone this year; if I could say it in one sentence, it would be “instead of giving guys a clear lane and a full second to shoot like last year, they were giving him partially obstructed lanes and a half-second.” Also interested in the offensive data stating they did not create nearly as much off the rush this year. Am I correct in reading that as they were sending one guy to blow the zone instead of 2? Certainly that would affect the numbers of Tuch and Cozens, who I’ve always found to be extremely dangerous off the rush. This also feeds into the acquisition of Byram, and type of defencemen they gravitate to: one way to compensate for fewer breakout targets is to employ accurate breakout passers. Another thing I’m curious about is how the numbers at both ends of the ice compared from the first half to the second. I felt by eye test there were noticeable improvements as the season progressed defensively. I did not necessarily feel the same way offensively. One would expect a break-in period at both ends of the ice, if we were dealing with a new system.

I don't need Kevin to make me feel better with rhetoric or sacrificial lambs. I have three questions I want answered: 1) One of the league's best offence's disappeared this season, apparently for 3 reasons: the power play was awful, the team could never get bodies and pucks to the net to score any greasy goals, and the team's 5 best goal scorers all regressed significantly. Why did this happen and how are you going to fix it? 2) This team was absolutely terrible in the first period. Why did this happen and how are you going to fix it? 3) Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was among the league's best goalies since Jan. 1. Beyond that, the team and its individual players did not post particularly good numbers in any particular part of the game. What are you going to do to make sure the Sabres won't be so reliant on one man to be the difference between winning and losing? Good managers diagnose the root cause of problems and they make corrections. I want to see a plan for addressing these issues and I will hold him responsible for its execution.

They won’t make it until Friday if they are getting fired. I will be shocked if Adams is fired. I don’t expect Granato to be, but I won’t be surprised if he is. I think public relations demands some form of sacrificial lamb, but I doubt he has it in him. Im not sure if he can do any better than “we’re committed to our plan and we will be working hard to get better”. Which ain’t gonna cut it with this group.

This season played out very much like 2016/17. A 78-point season of regression after a season of hope that the rebuild was coming to a close. It resulted in Bylsma and Murray getting shown the door. I see 2 differences: the internal organization was far more fractured then, the fan base is far more impatient now.

Officially, the 2nd most successful Buffalo Sabres season in the past 12 years? 🎉

Pretty sure it’s the fanbase. From what I hear half of them are really mean and boo the players and stuff. And the other half has their heads buried in the sand and refuses to make the team accountable for being so goddam terrible for so goddam long. 😘

I clearly see the argument. I can also see how that argument falls flat if your three “skill” defencemen can also play good defence. Nobody said the Robinson/Lapointe/Savard Canadiens had too many of the same type of defenceman. Or, if you want more recent, less once-in-a-lifetime examples, the Josi/Ellis/Subban Predators, or the Hedman/Shattenkirk/Sergachev Lightning, or the Theodore/Pietrangelo/Hanifin Knights. There’s no doubt Power and Byram have to get a lot better in their own zone. Considering they’ve played 162 and 163 games respectively, I expect they will. How much better they get will ultimately decide if the trade made sense or not.

I'd tend to hope that guy should have a longer resume than Eric Comrie's one 19-game season as an NHL backup. A Casey DeSmith/Jake Allen/Kevin Lankinen level guy maybe? But I actually think a guy like the Comrie of 2 years ago is the type of signing we're going to end up with: Adin Hill, Laurent Broissoit, Alex Lyon, Charlie Lindgren... Not necessarily those guys right now, but a guy in a similar situation to where they were a few years ago: 25-30, tasted the NHL, never quite cracked it.

Like I said, you don't really like the plan and you really don't like the execution 😁. My only point is that the hand hasn't fully played out yet. As to the bold, I think we all wanted Adams to use his depth in young, talented forwards to acquire a top 4 defenceman That's exactly what he did. You might say (many did) "not that young, talented forward for that top 4 defenceman". We shall see.

There are plenty. Chicago, Colorado and Tampa cup winners seemed too obvious and too successful. But they fit. This year's Vancouver team fits. New Jersey. The current Winnipeg Jets are product of this method. Ottawa is trying and thus far failing. Montreal has just started. The Florida Panthers tried and failed in the years around when Pegula bought the Sabres (22 years without a playoff series win, 19 of those without the playoffs at all) and finally got good when they tried a different path Sometimes it's just the darkness before dawn. Sometimes the sun doesn't rise at all.

I know you and Adams don't like the same players and that makes it really difficult for you to endorse his plan. But he's hardly building his roster solely through the draft. In the past 2 1/2 season he has acquired Tuch, Krebs, Lyubuskin, Comrie, Greenway, Clifton, Johnson and Byrum to augment his NHL roster and he'll almost certainly add a few more more over the next 2 or 3 months. They've been a pretty mixed bag and you can rightfully criticize his choices. But it's wrong to imply he's not interested in adding from outside the organization, and Tuch and Byrum say it's wrong to say he's not willing to make bigger moves. I don't think it's any secret what you don't like is that he has chosen to ice rookies like Benson and Quinn and Power instead of players who are better than those guys right now. But that wasn't the plan. And the plan isn't to keep adding more and more rookies. The plan was to accelerate the development of Tage, Dahlin, Mittelstadt, Cozens, Quinn, Peterka, Krebs, Samuelsson and Power by letting them learn in the NHL and fill in the gaps in that core as needed. Other than the 1st 3 players, the development part hasn't fully played out yet. Whether you like it or not, Mitts for Byrum was the first significant move to fill the gaps. It's the plan itself you don't like and that can absolutely be supported by the facts. But he hasn't finished what he started.

Up front is where I am most active. Jost, Olofsson and Robinson need to be significantly upgraded and another centre has to be acquired to fill the hole created by Mitts. I am looking to overhaul the identity of the bottom 6 and want to add two wingers who can bring the speed and hustle of Robinson, but with a degree more skill and a lot more meanness. I’d look hard at Dakota Joshua and Will Carrier: two guys who will punish on the forecheck and get to the net. My biggest investment comes at centre. I am still banking on Cozens as a legit 2C, and don’t need to bring in an upgrade, but a guy who can fill that role like a Stephenson works. I’m also fine with a more natural 3C. Just get me a warrior who can win faceoffs and score more than Johan Larsson. I think we’re more likely to target this guy in a trade. Girgs can play for my team if he wants to, but not at the expense of adding the above.

Id kick tires on a proven NHL backup to provide a safety net and make Levi earn the NHL. I think that will be hard because the more capable options will be reluctant to sign with Levi looking over their shoulders. They will sign someone. Fingers crossed he will be better than Dustin Tokarski and Malcolm Subban.

I’m probably in the minority, but I have no interest in adding a big ticket veteran free agent defenceman. If I could effectively flip Jokiharju or Bryson for a stouter RHD I would, but I think we have our top 4 already and am not ready to make a significant investment in another. A bottom 4 of Clifton, Jokiharju, Johnson and Bryson as a worst-case scenario is fine by me. Cliffy and Joki as the 5/6 are far from the problem with this team, both have looked pretty good in the 4/5 role in the back half of this season. Bryson appears to have recovered from the disaster that was the fall of 2022 and is far enough away from a top 4 slot to ease my worries. The quickest, most efficient way to improve is for Mule to play 70 games and Byram and Power to play to their draft status. Power has shown a lot better over the season’s second half. Hopefully Byram will fully embrace the team and the opportunity. I wonder about his friendship with Cozens and whether it will help feed each other’s commitment or do the opposite.

Sure, but we will have that C and Byrum.

Theres a lot in here I agree with and some I don’t, but what I want to respond to is this: They keep changing plans and deconstructing and then reconstructing in a perpetual cycle. It’s the single-most destructive, damaging aspect of the Pegula reign and the one that is hardest to overcome. it’s why I really want to give Adams a chance to finish what he started.

Fair enough. What I want most from next season is a GM who is right about Thompson, and Quinn and Cozens and Power.

This. I don’t think he put a number on it, but it was clear he was taking the long road of build from within. This is often what that road looks like. Carolina has made the playoffs 6 years in a row. Before that they missed for 9 straight years. Aho, Teravainen, Pesce, Slavin, Staal and Necas were all part of the team that missed that last year that led them to draft Svechnikov. Hanifan and Lindholm were also part of the team and were flipped (for Dougie Hamilton) kinda like Mittelstadt was flipped for Byrum. They built a critical mass and an identity from within, then added around it.

Some of this seems to be more hindsight though. Last year’s team could score with the best of them, but couldn’t keep the puck out of its own net. It had just improved by 16 points. Is that the context that cries for changing coaches? Adams brought in Johnson and Clifton and Greenway to address the goals-against and penalty-killing issues. He decided he was better off waiting for someone to emerge from his trio of goalies than bringing in an outsider. And he (my opinion) bet that he could bring in Pat Kane to fill the Quinn hole while leaning on Olofsson as his backup plan. He did not foresee his 4 top scorers all falling of as dramatically as they did, which - far more than any of the above - killed this year’s team. To me, it’s an excuse to say Adams wasn’t trying to make the playoffs this year. Semantics maybe, but in my opinion, his failures were failures of execution, not conviction.

@Flashsabre asked the question in another thread: Has Terry had enough and does he want to get serious about fixing this mess? Which brought up something I'm really curious about: Does Sabrespace think the existing core of the Sabres can still grow into the core of regular playoff team, as Kevyn Adams has clearly preached and managed toward up until this point? Has the Adams rebuild had a setback, or has it failed completely?

But Adams thought he was making the playoffs this season adding the players he did. He's always told us his plan was collecting young talent and nurturing them toward success and promised us it will work. By specific conviction, do you mean acquiring clearly better players to push the Peterkas, Quinns, Powers, Byrums and Bensons further down the depth chart, or even moving some of those players to acquire more established ones? Not arguing, just wanting you to expand on what you're actually hoping to see.

I realize that for most of us right now, it’s all about ending the drought. From a league-wide perspective, the Sabres are no different than a dozen other playoff bubble teams in the mix for the final few spots. Next year a couple teams from that group will be next year’s Vancouver and Nashville and a couple teams above that group will be next year’s New Jersey. I don’t think the Canucks jumped because they became urgent, or the Devils fell because they didn’t. 3 teams are tied for the last wild card spot right now: Detroit had about as “urgent” an off-season as any team. Philly and Washington looked like they were writing the year off to rebuild. Identify the holes and fix them as best you can.

Don’t need to tell you guys about the flaws of +/-. But within that context it does give you some indication of how successful a player has been in his role and relative to his team. On a team that is -7, 20-year-old Nikita Novikov is +19, far and away the best on the Amerks. He has 23 points in 62 games. No idea what the underlying metrics and eye test is saying, but the numbers look promising. Mattias Samuelsson had 12 points in 23 games as a 20-year-old rookie, and was -8 on an inferior Amerks team.

Whatever should happen, what will happen is Granato will be back with a few new assistants, most significantly Seth Appert, who will be the coach in waiting if the Sabres are sucking in November. That’s how Adams rolls.