dudacek

Not confusing that at all. Maybe a better way of saying it is: I don’t think our 9 best defensive forwards currently are good enough defensively, particularly when 2 of them are as available as Norris and Greenway. I also would say something similar about our 9 best ES forwards and or 9 best physical forwards. I like our top 9 in terms of speed and skill.

I don't want to do any of these moves specifically. I'm just providing examples of the types of moves that could be made to address holes. Of course only your way works when it's your video game, with your player and GM codes.

It's situational and more about having all 4 in the top 9. It's not really a knock on Peterka in and of himself, its because that mix forces Peterka to be your 3rd-best forward, with probably Norris, McLeod and Zucker as your 4/5/6. I think I'd be good with JJ at 3F if we had a few more McLeods behind him to lean on when we're up a goal. But Norris comes with availability questions and Zucker is more properly a 7F. I don't think Peterka manages pucks well enough yet to be a go-to in a protecting leads scenario. Wouldn't matter so much if there are multiple Mike Griers deeper in the lineup, but it does when the next guys up are Quinn and Kulich. And maybe he gets better, or maybe Kulich and Benson and Quinn do. But betting on all of them is what got us to where we are this year.

Not saying these evaluations are out to lunch, I am saying there is an issue with the mix: it's too callow. You can have Benson and Kulich on the team but not at the same time as you have Quinn and Peterka (and Kozak and/or Krebs). McLeod for Savoie was a big step in correcting that. Norris for Cozens might be another step. I think at least one more shoe has to fall. The fact you can't count on Norris and Greenway to stay healthy amplifies that.

I think the part I trip over is, you ask 'what would you do' and then immediately clamp on the restriction of "Adams won't do that." Because if it's you making the changes, it shouldn't matter what Adams will do. You're the GM now. You can trade whoever you want. You aren't stuck with Adams' choices. Example 1: Trade Peterka and Samuelsson for Cuylle and Schneider Example 2: Trade Byram and Quinn for Rasmus Andersson and Blake Coleman Example 3: trade Tuch and Norris for Petterson and Demko Example 4: trade Kulich for Ryan Nugent-Hopkins Example 5: Sign John Tavares, trade a young winger for help on defence Example 6: Sign Sam Bennett, trade a young winger for help on defence Example 7: Sign Mitch Marner, trade Zucker for a pick to clear salary You aren't married to any of these current Sabres forwards. Why are you deciding to keep them?

You think .79 pts per game in the AHL is a strong argument for 1C in the NHL 2 years later? Peyton Krebs put up better numbers in the AHL. Better numbers as an NHL rookie too.

Jiri Kulich pencilled in as 1st-line centre is the plan? Dude has played 57 NHL games and recorded 22 career points. He's never put up more than 46 points in any league anywhere. He has 8 assists, playing a majority of his year alongside one of the best goal scorers in the world. He should have 10 assists just from off pucks bouncing off his shins. Isn't this the kind of thing Kevyn Adams would do?

Tuch’s a tough one in that he’s going to get what almost certainly will be a bad contract yet typifies almost exactly what the team does not have enough of and can’t afford to lose at this juncture. Thanks Kevyn. In terms of the player as he is at this moment, he’s about as complete a package as one could ask for without being an actual “star”: rare size/speed combo, able to play in all situations with or against anyone. In terms of fandom, immensely easy to root for. Glad I haven’t seen the “3rd liner on a Stanley Cup team” BS in this thread. RW is the shallowest position, but I’d be shocked if you could name 15 better. Really interested to see how invested he is in the Sabres and this management team.He’s got a family now, his wife is from Vancouver, and he’s got a limited number of years left to enjoy playoff success. Re-signing him may not be Kevyn’s decision.

😜

I was reacting to a weekly power ranking designed to talk about current trends The Athletic: 'Ottawa seems to have traded for the 2023 version of Cozens' That Cozens put up 31 goals and 68 points. Cozens had produced at a 14-goal, 48-point pace at that point as a Senator Cozens produced at 15-goal 41-point pace this year as a Sabre Cozens was producing at a 7-goal, 35-assist pace over the previous 2-3 weeks as a Senator The Athletic statement would have held water for the first week or so of Cozens Ottawa stint, but it was not near the truth for his body of work as a whole, and it was blatantly false in terms of 'what have you done for me lately.' They weren't framing things in a different way, they were wrong.

I was thinking about how McLeod and Tuch seem to be fantastic penalty killers. And how Benson, Greenway and Malenstyn look pretty competent as well. Are our PK shortcomings largely the fault of the defence and/or the goalies? Does anybody have access to PK SV%s and can access how our guys stack up?

According to Fairburn, this is one of 4 times in the past 14 years the Sabres have recorded 10 wins in 13 games.

It is different, because my point still stands at 1 goal 5 assists and -7 and theirs still does not.

If he starts showing half the offence he did as a junior, he could become a Sabre legend. He's got the game this fanbase has been craving for decades.

I've been a Quinn guy since before we drafted him, but when it comes to looking at what's not working right now up front, Quinn in the top 6 is most obvious piece. Also,we have too many callow, smallish roster players who project best as top 6 forwards. Benson plays defence, Peterka creates the most offence, Kulich is probably the sturdiest and can play centre. To be clear, I'd trade any of them depending on the return, but we shouldn't keep them all and Quinn seems the most expendable.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with this, certainly the bit about we should not expect it to carry over. Not sure that I did a good job of nailing the distinction, but the bold comes close to what I was trying to get to. I do believe both winning and losing can become a habitual, so when you're trying to turn a lumbering disaster like this around, wins are always preferable.

But are they actually noticing? The Athletic’s latest power rankings were cooing how the Senators got the “2023 Cozens” as Dylan was on a stretch of 1 goal and -7 in 11 games. It’s not surprising how many narratives get accepted at face value, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

Not trying to trigger anyone here, but I think these wins do matter. Not in the macro front office planning sense of a “hey, maybe we aren’t so bad” course correction. But in the micro dressing room sense of “winning matters, winning needs to matter, and players need to feel some sense that there is a path available to get there.” I think about sports psychology, about the “Dahlin’s gonna want out” fears, about “kids can’t develop in a losing culture” worries. Wins are the balm.

I think the boundaries are arbitrary and the meme is a defence mechanism. Just like that other meme we used a see a lot of when there was still hope around here: “if you take out (insert ***** streak here) we’re actually (insert optimistic spin here). Losses are losses. Wins are wins. It’s not when or how, it’s how many.

The facts might be true, but underlying conclusion that they only get hot when it doesn’t matter is false. Sabres are currently on a streak of 7 wins in 8 games. They also had a streak of 7 wins in 9 games in November And another of 6 wins in 7 games sandwiched around the 4 Nations in February. Last year they rarely put together lengthy runs. But the one they did have was a 6 of 8 run in late February. The previous year is the one probably responsible for setting up this meme: 7 of 9 to finish strong and just miss the playoffs. The ironic thing there is the meme kinda falls apart because they were in a playoff race and the games did mean something. And their best streak that year was 8 of 9 to finish December. So 6 recent streaks like this and only one of them in garbage time? Of course nobody will remember this because it’s not a good story.

It's the sort of move that Jim Rutherford would have the balls to do if he decided EP40 is not the answer. And it's the sorta move Kevyn Adams and Terry Pegula would need to do if they have any hope of igniting any off-season interest in a severely alienated fan base. Kinda supports the idea of "that's OK, Josh, don't push that injury, we need you healthy for next year." Kinda supports the idea of Pettersson being babied into the off-season as well. Kinda supports the idea of the Sabres captain walking away from his pre-deadline meeting feeling good about the team having a plan. Dammit man, no one gets my conspiracy juices flowing like you do.

I go a little deeper, but I agree those were the three biggest roster holes this year: 2C, 3W and 1G. Those players underperformed their roles in dramatic fashion. But it doesn’t stop there: Owen Power was expected to take a step forward toward being a legit 2D. He was nowhere close. His points climbed a bit, but he dropped from one of team’s better plus performers to one of its biggest minuses. Mattias Samuelsson was supposed to be a leader and a shutdown defender by now. He was neither. His Corsi, +/- and xG% all declined and he was a major factor in a struggling PK. Jordan Greenway played fine, but he was available for less than half a season and was the teams only middle-sixer with size and defensive acumen. And it’s not really their fault, but Zach Benson and/or Jiri Kulich were miscast: 25ish points are not enough for where they were being slotted in the lineup. Add that to Clifton’s poor year in the #5 slot, the coaching staff’s utter inability to find a use for Jokiharju in the mix on defence, and the complete misses of Lafferty and Aube-Kubel as 2/3rds of the new-look 4th line, and there are a lot of areas where upgrades are needed. That’s about half the roster below where you need it to be, and that is assuming Byram, McLeod and Zucker can repeat career years and the question of 2G gets answered. Norris for Cozens addressed one question mark. Maybe Bernard Docker for Jokiharju addressed another. There’s a ton of others that still need answers.

Apparently the Canucks were very much interested in Norris before we got him and probably still are. He is a good friend of Quinn Hughes, who Canuck fans are desperately frightened may not want to re-sign if they have another year like this one.

I think sometimes this conversation bogs down in a weird conflation with "offence" meaning forwards and "defence" meaning defencemen. Really it's about the differential, isn't it? To me "offence" means "ability to score goals", plain and simple. The Sabres are 7th in goals for per game this season right now.* One of the reasons why is because their defencemen are so good at offence: Byram, Power and Dahlin are literally 6th, 24, and 35th in points by defencemen: 4th, 14th and 16th in ES points. They are also a reason why the team is 29th in goals against. Replace them with 3 Brent Pesces and I bet good money Peterka and Thompson and Tuch will certainly score fewer goals. The hope is they allow fewer as well. The key is finding the balance. If Dylan Cozens (for illustration purposes) weighs down every linemate he plays with, you get better replacing him with a player who doesn't. Doesn't matter if that player does it primarily through offence or defence. he just needs to be a "plus" or even just less of a minus. Bowen Byram is good offensively and lacking defensively. He's also +12 in a first-pairing role on a minus hockey team. Sure you can replace him with a player who's better defensively, but if that player is a -8 in the same role, he didn't actually make the team better. EDIT: I see you guys already covered this in the time it took me to write it. 😄 *** *(Unrelated, but an interesting discovery: the Sabres were 22nd in goals for at Christmas time. They've been the league's best offence since — from 2.82 g/GP up to 3.64. Not sure what's changed, but that's over 42 games, a full half-season sample. To Thorny's point, their goals against also went up, but not nearly as much — 3.47 to 3.55; they have improved both their record and their goal differential by scoring more goals.)

He's not and has been RW for 90 per cent of his shifts this calendar year. Could be a factor of what's best for Kulich, but I think RW is where Lindy wants him. Now Tuch/Thompson might be the best RW combo in the league, but the idea of betting on 2 of Norris (1 season above 35 points) McLeod (1 season above 30 points) and Kulich (1 season, 22 points) seems, umm, a tad optimistic?