dudacek

I wouldn’t be shocked to see Lindy use a base like he did 20 years ago: Thompson is his Briere, Tuch his Drury. Each anchors a complete, 2-way line he is comfortable icing against an opponents best line, something he didn’t have when he kept running out Cozens, Peterka and Quinn in his top 6 for the first half of last year. Theoretically, a Tuch/McLeod duo is going to be winning a lot of their matchups. Add Greenway as the Grier if you want to lean defence, Zucker as the Kotalik for offence. Benson seems ideal as the Hecht to Tage’s Briere. @mjd1001 says Kulich works as their centre. I’d feel more comfortable with Norris as more high-end option, but if he’s right about Jiri all the better. Then you can shelter Quinn on a unit as your Vanek, with Doan as his forechecker and defensive conscience. Krebs and Danforth can anchor a pesky energy line with whoever isn’t with Tuch, or be reliable plug-ins where needed. Malenstyn’s the spare.

I think fans generally lock themselves into a hierarchy-style lineup where you need to have a certain level of talent to qualify on a certain slot on the depth chart and play with other players of similar stature. Which is ridiculous of course. Coaches employ lines to play roles and those lines change game to game and shift to shift based on a multitude of factors. The last time the Sabres were good, the “3rd line centre” was 5th among forwards in ice time and the “1st line RW” was 7th. The “3RW” led the team in scoring. The previous good team the “3rd line centre” led the team in ice time.

Certainly it’s something I’m guilty of. But even allowing for the presence of that bias, how comfortable should we be slotting in McLeod as a 2C given his track record? Which is essentially one season. (For those wondering, McLeod’s production last season slides him inside the NHL top 50 for points production among centres. Coupled with his superior defensive results, that makes him unequivocally a legitimate 2C last year)

McLeod’s ice time late had a lot to do with Dylan Cozens being traded and Josh Norris being hurt. He may not have centred “the 1st line” but he was certainly the de facto 1C. He won’t be that as long as Norris is in the lineup and his ice time will decrease accordingly. However, unless Kulich takes a big step or Lindy changes his mind about Tage on the wing, McLeod will be the Sabres 2nd best centre. And he will get 2C ice time, regardless of what label Sabrespace puts on his line.

The other thing with Kesselring is that he is a late bloomer entering his 3rd NHL season and just coming into his own. You can’t count on a bunch of individual players getting better the way Adams has, but history teaches us that generally, careers take certain paths and players of Kesselring’s age and experience (and Power’s and Byram’s) are likely to get better.

I’m tired of crossing my fingers for players, but that’s been the Sabre way for 5 years now. To my eyes there’s a fair amount of potential upside on this roster. But there is an equal amount of downside, and only three players (Tuch, Thompson, Dahlin) that I’m reasonably comfortable that I know what I’m going to get. Sometimes, for some teams, the dice rolls the right way, like it did for Montreal last year and Vancouver 2 years ago. Never does for us. And it would be nice to stop depending on dice.

I disagree. Minor point: Appert was new to the NHL staff and it was neither clear how much his Amerks system had in common with Granato’s Sabres system, nor how much influence he had on Ruff’s system last season. More importantly, this was Ruff’s system, not Granato’s. I’ll defer to better systems minds than mine as to what the differences were, but there were differences, and it was reported that there was pushback from the players about those differences, particularly when things started falling apart in the fall. To my eyes, Bo Byram’s play notably elevated from what we saw at the end of the previous season, largely because the Ruff system had much more in common with the Colorado system he was used to. Meanwhile, his teammates on the blueline (with the exception of Dahlin) notably regressed to my eyes. Clifton’s drop-off was precipitous largely due to terrible reads. Power was visibly thinking instead of acting on a consistent basis. Samuelsson never looked comfortable. Luukkonen started guessing and overplaying things because he could no longer trust what his defencemen would do. Similarly, other players who played well under Ruff - I’m thinking specifically McLeod, Tuch, Zucker - were guys with a lot of games played outside Granato. Add in the defensive struggles of Quinn, Cozens and Peterka - all of whom had almost exclusively played a go-for-broke style under Granato for their NHL careers - and I think all the signs were there of an out-of-sync collection of players. To my eye, the team looked poorly coached. Personally, I never thought Granato was a terrible coach, and I do wonder whether the game has passed Lindy by. But I don’t think either man is completely incompetent. I think there was a concerted effort to change the way the team played that resulted in rough transition for a number of players, and eventually coach-driven changes to a roster that seems to have been a poor match to what the coach wanted to do. Theoretically, the learning curve should be over and the roster changes should result in a better fit. Neither are things we can count on though, especially when the quality of the roster, and the coaching staff remain questionable.

Some other notes: Jack Quinn: 30-goal top 6 winger or 35-point defensive liability? Josh Norris: 35-goal scorer or broken body waste of a roster space? Jordan Greenway: textbook big-body 3rd-line checker or broken body waste of a roster space? Mattias Samuelsson: capable #4/5 or broken body, broken spirit waste of a roster space? Michael Kesselring: emerging 2-way horse and missing piece on the blueline or serviceable 2-way #4/5? Josh Doan: hard-to-play against 20/20 grinder+ or Beck Malenstyn 2.0? Peyton Krebs: disposable JAG or emerging 2-way 3C? Ukka-Pekko Luukkonen: disposable JAG or legit NHL starter? I'm curious if any of these "roster filler" pieces have anything more to give.

Pure rental at least from the Sabres perspective and the Sabres have to be open to that. His skillset is exactly the missing piece up front: playmaking first-line winger; he’d save the PP and turn Norris into a 40-goal scorer. The cap hit and the NMC would be tough obstacles to overcome. Wonder what the relationship with Jarmo is like?

Owen Power had a rough season. I'm not entirely sure why, but I suspect the contract and the coaching change each played a role. He will be better this year, and probably a lot better because he's very gifted and very young, and that's what gifted young defencemen do. A lot of you probably won't notice right away because what you hate most about him isn't going to change.

Not seeing that myself, other than Montreal. Other than that, this was the summer of shuffling deck chairs.

There are a lot of teams with the cap space left for Rust and Rakell, and not many other choices of that caliber on the market available for futures. Adding either would elevate my hope meter, but I have a strong suspicion demand will escalate the price beyond anything Adams will be willing to pay.

It would have been such a small thing to just not sign Bryson and use that money to sign Gilbert or a reasonable facsimile.

I kinda look at the revised depth chart as this: Dahlin -> Dahlin Byram -> Byram Power -> Power Samuelsson -> Kesselring Jokiharju/Docker -> Samuelsson Clifton -> Timmins Bryson -> Bryson Clague -> Jones Johnson -> Johnson Novikov -> Novikov Hopefully the prospects at the bottom can push their way up into the call-up mix, but they won’t start there. Kesselring makes them better, but “good” still rests a lot on what version they get of Power and Mule.

And apparently he never will be.

Big hockey news in my corner of the world. We got him. We got Matt Irwin: https://www.vicnews.com/sports/hometown-hire-victorias-matt-irwin-signs-on-with-grizzlies-staff-8115790

The NHL measurement of hits, giveaways and takeaways is a great arbitrary mystery to me. Love to see an explanation of how they are defined, tracked and verified.

If this is what’s going on, why the charade of arbitration? Why not just take one of the futures assets deals already offered? Also, why trade Cozens for an even bigger contract just a few months ago? The Norris deal pays near $2.5M more in actual salary this year and will cost Terry about $7M more in real money over the duration.

Greenway?

Maybe you have a better handle on it than me, but I’m kinda looking at Byram 8 Timmins 2 as a worst-case scenario. Once I read that injuries can be used as evidence in the hearing, that popped a pretty big hole in either arbitration case for me. And we’re talking guys with career highs of 39 and 15 points. Now that may change if either signs for term. Do you see that as a possibility with Byram?

There is not a lot of things to feel good about right now as a Sabres fan. Could this be one? Power 6’6 226 Kesselring 6’5 215 Samuelsson 6’4 227 Timmins 6’3 213 Dahlin 6’3 204 Byram 6’1 205 These guys range from pretty good to elite in their skating ability. No one is small. No one is slow. Five of them had enough skill to be picked in the top 32 picks of the NHL draft, 3 were the first defencemen taken, 1 is a top 4 defenceman in the league and the best to ever wear blue and gold. All of them are young enough to say that their best hockey is ahead of them. All of them are old enough to say that they’ve been around the block a few times. They’ve got balance and flexibility in terms of where they slot, utility and skill sets. They all have reasons to be highly motivated. On paper, the pieces seem to fit. It’s been so long since we’ve had a good defence corps I probably forget what one looks like. But can this be it? Can we actually have something good? Or are Lindy Ruff and Marty Wilford going to drive these guys into Lake Erie?

I will be surprised if he’s traded. I think the Sabres have chosen this path because they’ve seen the offers and they are legitimately not interested in them. If teams weren’t willing to up their offers before, this process isn’t likely to change their minds. I just hope Buffalo is legitimately keeping him because he’s their best chance to win, and they still intend to pull the trigger on another forward.

Then you can go with a more traditional PP2: Power flanked by Norris and Quinn, with Tuch and Zucker in the bumper and down low.

I called for it last summer. Old school PP with Bo and Ras cycling in and out of the mid-point and sneaking down low, Tage and Kulich rotating behind them firing from distance, probably Bennie down low going to the net, retrieving pucks and making plays. It will be different than what most PKs are used to.

For me, it’s all about the spend after Byram. Realistically, they are going to have enough money to acquire a player after he’s signed, and probably enough to acquire a good player. It’s going to be closer to $5 or $6M than $2 or $3M. I’m skeptical they are going to use that money. I think they will say the market dried up or the prices were too high, when the fact of the matter is they let the market dry up and they decided the prices were too high. Once again, unrealized opportunity. I hope I’m wrong.