dudacek

It does create a competitive imbalance so from a parity perspective it should be limited. But the human perspective - that people should have freedom to decide where they work - I’m in favour. The fact the NHL limits it to veteran players seems to be a fair compromise to me. Semi-related, it’s not the drag on team creation some make it out to be. I’m not drinking the Kevyn Adams koolaid on that one.

xGF% is an interesting stat. It gets thrown out in some quarters as the defining characteristic of how good a player is, but it’s really just a measurement of high danger chances allowed versus created that is heavily influenced by team factors such as system, deployment and teammates. It has all the same inherent weaknesses as plus/minus when it comes to player comparisons. Or do we really believe Jordan Spence, Shayne Gostisbehere and Nate Schmidt are elite players (ranked 2, 3 and 4), while Brock Faber (169), Brandon Montour (177) and Seth Jones (209) are terrible?

Dahlin was 50th, 1 slot behind Kesselring, who led Utah. But Utah overall was very good at that particular stat, with 5 D in the top 79. It remains to be seen if he (and Timmins, who also is good at this stat) can elevate Byram and Power (165 and 168) at all, or if they get pulled toward the bottom in Buffalo.

Chicken or egg, half the D were a terrible match for the system last year. People talk a lot about how Byram’s fancy stats got inflated by Dahlin. They don’t talk about how they got deflated by the other guys. Clifton, Bryson and Samuelsson were truly awful in Lindy’s system. As in 208, 202 and 223 out of 240 D who played 300 minutes last year.

Speaking only in terms of their play defensively, the Sabres seem to believe: Norris > Cozens Doan > Peterka Danforth > Lafferty Kesselring > Jokiharju Timmins > Clifton They also think Lyon is more capable of supporting/challenging UPL than Reimer was because age limited Reimer's workload. If you think that's basically boils down to Kesselring, I guess we'll see.

This is what Lindy has pinpointed as the Sabres biggest problem and you've heard many players talk around. As far as they coach is concerned it boils down to players not understanding how to manage games. it's not so much about structure and effort, its about making safe, boring decisions when you've got the lead: not cheating on offence, not turning pucks over at the bluelines, getting it deep and getting off. Not forcing your goalie to get into hero puck mode. Cozens, Quinn, Samuelsson and Clifton IMO were the worst offenders. Two of them are gone. Peterka and Power were good players that needed to improve in this area, Lafferty and Malenstyn bad players who needed the same. Two more gone. Will the changes be enough to reach critical mass for the team as a whole? Will the critical mass be enough to get the goalie back on track? To me, those are the questions that will make or break the season.

Moneypuck however, allows you to do that if you want to play around. https://www.moneypuck.com/goalies.htm UPL ranks 21 out of the 30 goalies who played 40 games in low range shots, 26 on medium and 29th on high-danger The previous year he was 24, 5th and 19th out of 34 qualifiers.

I totally get what you're saying, but the stat isn't presented that way. They weigh the save percentage equally whether its over 20 games or 60 on NHLedge. You'd have to see if there's some way you could filter it to only include "starting" goalies.

Analytically speaking the Sabres best hope might be this: Owen Power career 51.9% Corsi despite playing with a rotating cast of bad partners over his first three NHL seasons Jack Quinn significant drop-off across the board in all three categories after being a positive player in all three over his first two seasons. Mattias Samuelsson, see Jack Quinn Along with Dylan Cozens, these seemed to be the skaters who suffered the most from the coaching change and the players with the most analytical potential to bounce back

Now nobody actually thinks the team improved by swapping Peterka for Doan and most of us could get invested in Cozens for Norris and Jokiharju for Kesselring no matter what the analytics say, but that's fancystats for you.

Analytically speaking, and superficially at 5 on5: Norris for Cozens appears a wash Doan for Peterka a small gain Danforth for Lafferty a small gain Kesselring for Jokiharju a small gain Timmins for Clifton a significant gain It kinda follows the Athletic analytics model: they got incrementally better overall, but not enough to make up the gap needed.

Josh Norris is a mediocre forward at best analytically. His numbers have fluctuated over the years, but he was at 48% Corsi, had 45.3% in xG% and a bad 40% in ESGF% last year Justin Danforth is only slightly better: 48% Corsi, had 50.1% in xG% and 44.8% in ESGF% Conor Timmins was good: 52% Corsi, had 51.6% in xG% and 56.5% in ESGF% Zach Jones mediocre: 49% Corsi, had 47% in xG% and 50% in ESGF%

Doan and Kesselring ranked 1st and 5th respectively on Utah in terms of Corsi at 58% and 54% They were 7th and 3rd in ESGF% at 53.7% and 56.5% And they ranked 1st and 7th in terms of xG% at 60.6% and 53.3% Neither player was getting the most mportant minutes, but they were clearly winning the battles in the matchups they were seeing.

Analytically speaking, the Sabres have dumped 3 of their 6 worst ESGF% players: Lafferty, Clifton and Cozens. Two others in the top 6 — Bryson and Malenstyn — have been pushed down the depth chart. Clifton, Malenstyn, Lafferty and Bryson were also four of their worst five Corsi players and four of their worst 5 xG% players. The most prominent departure, Peterka, actually had a very solid ESGF% of 54.2%. His Corsi was 49% and his xG% just 45.3%. In terms of real goals, when these players were on the ice at ES, the Sabres were outscored: Cozens 46-56 Clifton 41-51 Bryson 27-38 Malenstyn 17-33 Lafferty 11-26 Peterka was on the ice for more goals against than any other forward, but at 82-77 was a + player overall.

I think it's broader than that. They've added Norris, Doan and Kesselring and they expect growth from Quinn, Benson and Kulich. They also want to score more on the power play. Combined, they think those factors should at least mitigate things. But I think that's an afterthought in terms of off-season strategy. I think they are almost entirely focused on cutting their goals against significantly and transforming from a -20 team goal-differential team to a +20 team, which almost certainly will earn them a playoff spot.

These are the numbers I was referring to earlier: https://moneypuck.com/goalies.htm It's interesting that UPL generally also ranked low in the "above expected" categories, meaning that even with the poor defence factored in, he's not making enough saves.

A rank in 30s would just mean you're average. I think the problem is how badly things fell off across the board. He went from slightly above average to very good in most categories last year to below average in everything. I've dug up some actual numbers: 24/25 Games started SV% > .900: 45.5% (Below 50th percentile) 23/24 Games started SV% > .900: 64.7% (90th) 24/25 Save percentage: .887 (Below 50th) 23/24 Save percentage: .910 (70th) 24/25 High danger save percentage: .769 (Below 50th) 23/24 High danger save percentage: .830 (86th) 24/25 Mid-range save percentage: .873 (Below 50th) 23/24 Mid-range save percentage: .893 (52nd) I mean someone could run the actual numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if he put up his 2023/24 numbers last year, the Sabres are in the playoff mix. Now I recognize that's not all on him, but it's pretty hard to underestimate the impact good goaltending would have on this team. The over/under .900 number is huge. James Reimer had 8 games over .900 down the stretch and just 3 under. Not coincidentally, the Sabres went 1-2 in the unders and 7-1 in the overs.

I'm really curious to see whether Peterka is more Sam Reinhart or Miro Satan.

Your answer is Sam Reinhart. NHL teams in general sign players to deals like this with the assumption the player will be overpaid at the start of the contract and underpaid at the end of the contract as they develop. The Sabres in particular also have to deal with the issue of attracting/retaining talent as one of the league’s less attractive markets and are more sensitive to the realities of “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” than, say, Vegas. Those are your big picture contextual answers. As to Power himself the tools and the pedigree are obvious; it’s also pretty clear after two years of watching him train, practice and interact that they regarded the person as someone they are comfortable investing in long-term. When they signed him Power was coming off his second season with these statistics: ES points 26 icetime 1880 Corsi 52% GF% 53% xGF% 47.2% These are Power’s peers at the time of signing their second contracts. Luke Hughes ES points 28 icetime 1506 Corsi 56% GF% 52.8% xGF% 55% Jake Sanderson ES points 15 Icetime 1687 Corsi 50% GF% 47.5% xGF% 49.2% Moritz Seider ES points 24 Ice time 1833 Corsi 45% GF% 48.6% xGF% 42.7% Rasmus Dahlin (bubble season) ES points 12 Ice time 1211 Corsi 55% GF% 43.6% xGF% 50.7% Seider $8.5m and Sanderson $8m signed similar deals to his. We’ll see what Hughes gets soon. Dahlin signed a bridge for $6M which (with inflation) represents roughly what would have been the alternative to what Power signed. I’d also point to the deals signed by the likes of Miller and Provorov this summer under the growing cap as a sign of things to come and a warning of how $8M is not going to be what it was, very soon. None of that changes the fact that Power regressed in the 1st year of his 2nd contract while his peers continued to develop. We’ll see if that is a blip, or whether he bucks the trend and fails to emerge the way most players of his pedigree tend to, and the way he was on track to in his first 2 seasons. Bringing it back to Reinhart. There's an example of a high-pedigree guy who wasn't an immediate star and the Sabres did not lock up. Fear of repeating that mistake has to be a motivator. Your question was what did they see in him. There’s an answer. The contract still has 6 years to prove its worth.

NHL.com breaks goalie save percentages down into three categories. Too lazy to look up the numbers again, but my memory is telling me UPL ranked in the 30s among 60ish NHL goalies in sv% the “easier” situations and nearly at the bottom in the toughest situations.

I don’t think so. I don’t see a team where the D are making a lot of bad offence-first choices and giving up a ton of chances as a consequence. I saw (in particular) Clifton, Power and Samuelsson making a lot of poor zone coverage decisions and execution. And I saw forwards (especially Quinn and Cozens) too often making a lot of bad puck decisions that flipped the ice the other way.

The numbers say UPL is demonstrably better in low and medium chance situations than in high danger ones.

I think one of the reasons the Sbres offence has been as effective as it has is the amount they generate from the blueline. This team has three of the top 20 even strength scoring defencemen in the league and Kesselring added another player in the top 50. Owen power was 3rd on the Sabres, but would have been 1st on 19 teams. The Sabres top 4 D accounted for 141 points last year. Colorado led the league with 132. Forwards generally find is easier to score with that kind of support from the blueline and I suspect it will help the new arrivals.

It seems like you did. Basically I'm just comparing the 2023 team with the guy who took his roster spot and/or role. Incrementally, we got harder in most positions. it's not much on a player for player level, but across half a team its significant. (incidentally, I neglected Benson. Asplund and or Hinostroza were the next two for the 23 team in terms of games played)

Soft is an overused word and one that rests on a spectrum. In terms of that spectrum, which of these players do you consider harder? Cozens Norris Mittlestadt McLeod Peterka Doan Skinner Zucker Olofsson Kulich Okposo Greenway Girgensons Malenstyn Jost Danforth Jokiharju Byram Lyubushkin Kesselring Bryson Timmons As much as people complain Adams hasn’t made changes, this is not the same Sabres team it was.