LGR4GM

Zach Benson doesn't need the AHL.

God for once I just want Forton to prove me wrong, just once.

There isn't enough experience, good enough goaltending, or good enough coaching to be a playoff team. Unless something magical happens, we will miss for the 15th year in a row and come in around 85pts.

I do want to say yet again, I don't think Doan will replace Peterka.

in all seriousness there is enough evidence right now to suggest saying "Doan is replaceable" and implying he's a JAG is very much incorrect. I don't think guys who forecheck like Doan are a dime a dozen but I do think NHL teams and NHL fans have a really hard time recognizing the skill and valuing it appropriately.

They don't move. Byram mentioned that right after he got here. Tage sits at the half wall, Dahlin moves around the point. There's no high to low or low to high movement of players. They don't rotate around.

JJ Peterka as a 21yr old rookie: 12g, 20a, 77games, 0.416ppg Kulich has 0.381ppg, just noting the how close Kulich was to producing at Peterka's level. Kulich is also 3 months younger. Not saying he will produce at Peterka's level but we should compare apples to apples and rookies to rookies. We can have a discussion somewhere else about it being a downgrade and trading away a more finished product. Doan has 0.452ppg (but he's 23 so take that into account)

I personally don't think that is the key at all to playoffs. The key is getting even average NHL goaltending.

15g, 25a would be my rough guestimate as to his 80% but we don't have enough data.

He's been called a throw in, a 4th liner, a grinder, a late bloomer, a good checker, inexperienced, an unknown, good, bad. But what is he? First let us start with the games played, 62. That is barely enough to call it a sample and to put that in perspective, Zach Benson has 146, Jiri Kulich has 63. This is to say, Josh Doan has a bit of a mystery box to him because there isn't multiple seasons to look at. Now let me get this out of the way here, that is a problem and it is a reason why the Peterka trade has major flaws. The Sabres traded a forward with 238 games and his forward replacement has 62games. Now that we have acknowledged the experience and sample questions, let's look at what we do have in those 62 games. Really quickly, can this not become another "Adams is stupid" thread? I get it, 62 games and 23yrs old, there's some hope and some projection in there. But every thread is Adams is dumb and idk, can we focus on the player? Just asking. Josh Doan last year on Utah HC ranked 2nd in xGF% at 5v5 with a 61.45xgf%. The only player above him was Yamamoto who only had 133 5v5 minutes, compared to Doan's 600mins. Same for HDCF% where Doan has a 63.02hdcf%. Now zone starts can impact this for sure even though hockey is free flowing and there are a ton of on the fly changes (525), it does help to see who is getting helped most. Doan has 102ozone, 154nzone, and 74dzone starts. By far he started in the neutral zone most with a slight lean into the o over the d zone. I don't think that split would over produce his xGF or HDCF. The next part is how much offense was Doan creating? xGF% tells us the split between but not what was being created. In order to do that, we need to adjust for TOI especially for a first year player in Doan. xGF/60 puts Doan at 3rd on the Utah HC, behind Yamamoto and Hayton, with 3.08xGF/60. For reference, JJ Peterka was at 2.62xGF/60. Now remember those numbers are certainly influenced by systems and team play. Buffalo was bad at sustaining pressure and instead created most of the offense off of the rush (Peterka was really good at that). The Sabres have 0 player over 2.85xGF/60 (Kulich) and that shows you that the system itself is having an impact. But Doan was creating offense for Utah but it just was not clicking or turning into points. Which brings us to PDO or "luck" as some call it. PDO measures PDO=(Shots For/Goals For×100)+(Shots Against/Saves×100) and if you are at 100, you are average, below or above is just that, below average or above average. Peterka had a 1.032PDO, the highest on the Sabres. Many look at McLeod and say he was lucky, he was but only 1.020. Doan on the other hand falls at 0.990 which suggest we see positive regression from him. Now this isn't to toss Peterka under the bus, we are looking at 5v5 specifically and Peterka will be making up for lost 5v5 production with PP production on a team that doesn't run the 24th PP in the league (Utah was 10th in pp%). It is more or less looking at Doan's stats and showing a comparable to understand what Analytics might have been talking to Adams about. I say Analytics because like the McLeod trade, the underlying numbers here seem to indicate at least some intent. AGAIN, I am not saying Doan is better than Peterka, I am merely giving you Peterka's Sabres' numbers for some context. With all of that said about Doan, his good 61.45xgf%, his fairly even zone starts, his 63.02hdcf%, 3.08xGF/60, and a bit below average PDO, the question is what will Doan actually be. After what is effectively 1 NHL season over two years, he has stats that average to 15.9g and 21.2a per 82gp. That's about a typical 3rd line player. At 23yrs old coming off of 1 season, is there an offensive jump to have? Will he get more TOI in Buffalo? He's going to at minimum slot behind Tuch and Thompson on the right but could still end up with McLeod as his center. In the end, the underlying stats look good but they are based on a 62 game sample on a team that plays far better overall hockey than Buffalo's run and gun style. My conclusion, there's enough here to make me believe that Doan has 20g, 30a potential and could be a legit 2nd line winger in his prime (26-30), but again, Adams is gambling because he already had a legit 2nd line winger in Peterka. Doan plays better defense. Peterka seems to score more goals (especially off the rush). Doan could also end up as a 10g, 15a type of guy which in the grand scheme of things would really require him to play elite defense to help balance this trade. In the end, we will certainly know a lot more about Doan after this season in Buffalo. My prediction? he'll have around 14g, 26a if he locks down a 3rd line role for all 82 games.

Keeping Wilford is like getting Lewis Hamilton to drive your Indie Car but putting a stock civic engine (wilford) in it and then being like "idk why he can't win!?!?"

That's why I put him with McLeod and Doan. Quinn likes the offhand side because it is easier to cut into the middle and shoot. With Doan and McLeod, it hides Quinn's defensive issues while giving him a puck carrier in McLeod and a dig it out of the corner in Doan, both of whom are good defenders. I think they want Kulich at center but I could see Krebs getting some time at LW instead of staying on the 4th line since Danforth is here. Greenway to me is almost strictly a 4th line player at this point. He can play PK, and get about 10 other minutes a night on the 4th line while being an adult in the room. I don't need him for more, even if Adams overpaid him. That's my logic at least.

The Sabres would have been better served if Forton was smart enough to draft Ziemer's in the 2nd and 3rd round more often.

Benson - Norris - Tage Zucker - Kulich/McLeod - Tuch Quinn - McLeod - Doan Greenway - Krebs - Danforth Byram - Dahlin Power - Kesselring Samuelsson - Timmins

Zach Benson is already a solid nhl player. Idk why we have to have this conversation repeatedly. Fully agree on the gt issue. Greenway staying healthy doesn't matter. Zucker hopefully does, Norris too, agree there. I worry less about power and Kesselring overall and more that Wilford was retained and Ruff is mediocre.

Do you not understand how elite Benson already is defensively? You don't think the points are going to come when he's getting time with good players and more than Ruffs stupid 14mins a game? Zach Benson is going to explode in terms of production.

Has Adams talked about Timmins playing up the lineup since he stopped actively trying to trade Byram?

I think Jordan Greenway is very mediocre and I wouldn't have given him 2yrs. He's a 4th guy after all the injuries.

I think Doan overtakes Greenway within 2 months.

Kesselring is going to end up with Owen Power. It is almost all Adams has spoken about in regards to that trade, "finding a partner for Power".

Nonsense. Good teams with competent management extend their young good players and figure out the cap issues later. They could have extended JJP and traded Jack Quinn. They could have extended JJP and traded Samuelsson. Lots of ways to get JJP under contract. You write this like there was no possible solution, when there were 100 options. Hell, they could have done NOTHING else but extend JJP and would still be under the cap because you are forgetting the 2.325 that's going to Doan and Kesselring. Adams could have been smart and not signed Greenway to 4million bucks when he's worth half of that. They had the space to sign JJP, they wanted to trade him instead or at the very least he didn't want to sign but it the cap was not a hinderance to it happening. No we aren't. That is included in the Sabres current cap number. They have 5.19 million in cap space left including Skinner's 4.44million. https://puckpedia.com/team/buffalo-sabres

So... he wasn't taken to arbitration then... right! Asking for a friend.

Anyways. Have fun.

This place is such a shitshow these days. Truly the drought has ruined it because there's nothing to talk about. We're gonna have ***** gt with ***** coaching and finish around 83-85pts. Adams will make excuses, Ruff will retire, Appert will be coach (see now I'm making assumptions), and we'll lose again next year. Rinse and repeat. Because the only thing the gm was more afraid of than arbitration was an offer sheet. This isn't hard.